The Blessing of Loyalty to God till the End

It’s amazing how God can bring two perfect strangers and create an instant bond and friendship, just because the Cbirst-character being developed in their lives makes it easy to share their common passion for a driven purpose live, full of peace, hope and joy and because when Jesus’s love is within you, it can’t stay locked in, it just overflows freely towards others. Since I am not to good at making new friends by my own, it just amazes me how easy it was to establish a strong raport towards this total stranger senior fellow I met the other day early in the morning minutes before sunrise on the back of the boat. So I was with my cup of coffee and my camera waiting to get a good shot at the beautiful set of huge rainy clouds against the sunrise, beautiful spectace when Chuck was behind me trying to get a good angle as well, but I was partially blocking his view, so I apologized and then offered him space and then we started talking. Chuck told me his story of how against all the challenges involved by his advanced age and his health problems and the fact that he had noone to cruise with, he finally made it to cruise with us on the boat. I learned more about his life in 45 min. than I know about some of my friends I have been seeing for the past 5 months under the same ship’s roof. And it was so refreshing to having met him and shared with him different experiences. Without him having explicitely mention at the beginning I knew I had just met a brother in Christ, everything in him pointed at it, his positive attitude towards life, even though his all life long loved wife had recently passed away, his love for meeting people and sharing with them that feeling of wellness, even though he showed evident signs of health problems proper of his age, his passion for singing and playing the piano, even though his fingers are no longer strong enough and his voice no longer the same as years before, his peace conveyed through his heart, even though he knows he might not have too long left in this Place. Overall, after our short meetings in the mornings right before sunrise after that day I met him, I concluded that he was satisfied with the way he spend his life and that he was ready to go Home. That’s the sort of peace that the Apostol Paul wrote about when he said “I have fought a good fight, I have come to the end of my journey, I have kept the faith: From now on the crown of righteousness is made ready for me, which the Lord, the upright Judge, will give to me at that day...” My friend Chuck did many mistakes in his life as he mentioned to me, mistakes that he regrets about, but he understood very well that the grace of God and his mercy upon his life was much more abundantly than the consecuences of them. He relied on Christ’s forgiveness and grasped very well the concept of living his life for Him and honoring and glorifying God in everything.
Chuck was a huge blessing for my life and I do thank God for crossing him in my way. Two lessons I learned: God puts in our way people He knows we’ll benefit from and God is looking forward to put his children in others people’s way so that they can benefit from us and it’ll be easy to bond with and create strong relationships that can last long. And second, Jesus’s promise that He’ll be with his elected till the end is still valid and it can be seen in lifes like the Apostol Paul’s, two thousands years ago as well as in people like Chuck, today. Among the things we need to do, is have a willing heart to learn and obey God’s divine and perfect rules, because He knows better than us. After all, he created me and you and knows how we are supposed to work. You who read, I encourage you to give Christ a chance to direct your life and you will see things and experiment things that you never thought you could feel and live.